“So? Linger.” I waved at the bathroom.
She crossed the floor. Even when she had been a mortal woman and no monsters had changed her blood, she’d been light on her feet, graceful as a dancer.
“Let me.” She kneeled and unlaced my boot. I made noises telling her to stop, but she pinned me with a look that I’d learned not to argue with.
After the boot and sock were gone, she worked at the brace. I winced when she tugged. She stilled, her hand on the back of my calf, supporting the weight of my leg.
“Swollen,” I said, unnecessarily.
“Let’s take it off in the bathroom.” She rose and offered her hand. I was not too proud to accept it and lean on her.
The bathroom smelled of soap and pine, and a paper strip across the toilet bowl assured the whole thing had been properly scrubbed.
“Sit.” Lu closed the toilet lid and pointed.
“You know I can do this on my own.” I maneuvered around her in the small space and took my place on the throne.
“Don’t be so stubborn. Just let me…. Brogan, I want to take care of you.” She looked up, then back down at me, as if grasping the very last of her patience.
“Sure,” I said, catching her hand. “You know I’m all right, don’t you?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
“Is this about the crash?”
“You…” She pushed her shoulders back, eyes flashing gold. “I hate drinking blood.”
It was my time to remain silent.
“When I’m that hungry, I don’t think. I miss details. Too much of my head filled with…hunger. I want to know…I need to know you really are okay. I’m missing some time today.”
“All right. Let’s see. How am I doing?” I gave her a shit-eating grin and made a big deal about leaning back, my hands behind my head, and flexed my biceps for good measure. “Can’t say I mind a woman waiting on me hand and foo—ow! The devil, Lula!”
She stood with the ankle brace dangling from one finger, having bent and removed it so quickly I hadn’t even seen her move. “You were saying? Woman waiting on you hand and foot?”
I wiped sweat off my forehead and blew out a breath. “I was teasing. You know that, you wicked thing.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“It got you out of that mood, didn’t it?” I wiped my face again.
She didn’t have to take a step to turn on the shower, the room was that small. “What mood?”
“Sad. Worried. I’d say morose, but you’ve just reminded me how fast you move when you’re annoyed.” I waggled my eyebrows to take the edge off that comment.
“I wasn’t in a mood. I was concerned about you, you oaf.”
I heaved up onto my feet. Well, foot. “Lula.” I brushed fingers down her arm. “I’m doing good. Good enough. I’m tired, worried about…well, a few things. Worried about you, mostly.”
“I’m good.” She seemed to hear the echo of my words and added, “and worried too. I feel like we’re being led to something. Forced into the hunt. Headwaters, Eunice, Cupid. I don’t like it, feeling corralled. But for now, for right now.” She slid the shirt she was wearing up and over her head, dropping it to the floor. “I want to get in this water.”
She unhooked her bra. Let it fall.
“I want to get into this water with you.” Her belt unhooked, then she undid the button and zipper. “So I can touch you. So I can feel you. So I know you’re alive and whole and here. And mine.”
She slipped out of her underwear, and then, with a fleeting glance over her shoulder—in which I drank in the graceful twist of her spine, the silken white of her skin, made better by the imperfect scattering of freckles—she stepped into the water.
And I was not a man to refuse an invitation from the woman I loved.
